


a (re)awakening

by hockeydyke



Series: paradigm shift [2]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: College, Fluff, Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sleep, Sleeping with another person is hard when that person is a human furnace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2019-10-02
Packaged: 2020-11-10 19:57:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20857403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hockeydyke/pseuds/hockeydyke
Summary: It's nice and all that Bitty has an explanation for his nightmares, but that doesn't help the fact that they've been keeping him from sleeping all week. And unfortunately, his furnace of a boyfriend isn't helping much either.A continuation of Paradigm Shift, but not necessary to read that in order to understand this.





	a (re)awakening

**Author's Note:**

> That's right, I'm back with a very short sequel to Paradigm Shift, complete with the obligatory Neck Deep quote to open!

_ Round and round and round this goes _

_ Playing on your stereo _

_ When I'm away and you can't sleep _

_ Just know that it's the same for me _

(From Growing Pains, Neck Deep)

At the beginning of March, Bitty goes three days without sleeping.

He’s had issues with his sleep schedule in the past-- especially during his whole dive off the deep end during the past fall semester-- but nothing this bad. It’s a strange stutter-step backward to a problem he thought he’d already dealt with. 

And dealt with it he has. He’s still seeing his therapist every other week, seeing as that’s as much as his insurance will cover, and he even has a PTSD diagnosis that he’s still wrapping his head around. His therapist says that the types of nightmares he has-- violent, intimate, and horrifically  _ persistent--  _ are a fairly typical symptom.

Knowing why he has nightmares, though, doesn’t help at all in stopping them. Kelly says that she’s going to talk to another specialist to come up with some strategies for him to try, but for now they’ve somehow become worse than ever. 

But he’s dealing with it. And yes, he’s aware that keeping himself awake with baking and homework and maybe mothering the boys a bit too much isn’t the healthiest approach, but his hope is that he’ll exhaust himself enough to collapse into a deep enough sleep that he won’t even dream. Then, maybe, he can rest.

Tonight does not seem to be that night. He’s tricked by a wave of exhaustion when he gets home from his Tuesday night class, so he kicks off his shoes and rushes up to bed to take advantage of it, but within five minutes it’s clear that whatever sleepiness he’d been hit with is now gone.

So he sits and stews over it, which he knows is just going to get him even more worked up and unable to sleep, but he really can’t help it. Everything seems to be a distraction right now, from the light in the hallway to the sound of Nursey and Dex chatting across the hall to his phone buzzing with texts on his nightstand.

The fifth time his phone vibrates, he sits up in bed, livid. Sure, he hadn’t actually started to doze off, but he might have been just on the edge of doing that much if it weren’t for whoever was being an absolute nuisance in the group chat.

He deflates when he sees who’s been texting. It’s not the group chat, after all.

Within seconds, Bitty’s on his feet and taking the steps downstairs two at a time. He unlocks the door and throws it open, and sure enough, his boyfriend is on the other side. Jack looms in the doorway for a moment, a little unsteady on his feet, and Bitty can see the severity of the dark circles under his eyes even in the dim illumination from the Haus front porch light. Poor boy looks like he hasn’t been sleeping well, either. That’s not surprising, since he just got back from a week long roadie earlier today.

“Hi, I’m sorry,” Jack says. He leans down to kiss Bitty, cheeks flushed, the way they always get when he comes in from the cold. “I was missing you a lot and I decided I could deal with skipping optional morning skate tomorrow. I should have texted before I left.”

“Silly man,” Bitty says, but pats at his arm before pulling him down for another kiss. “You should have, but of course you can stay over.”

“Did I wake you?” Jack asks as they start to shuffle toward the stairs, still too entangled to actually walk.

“Nope, I was still up,” Bitty said, shaking Jack off and giving him a gentle nudge up the stairs.

“Did you eat dinner?” Jack asks, scritching the hair at the base of Bitty’s neck.

“Mmhmm,” Bitty hums. “Taco Tuesday at the dining hall.”

Jack opens his mouth to ask another question, but his own body interrupts him with a deep, gaping yawn.

Bitty snorts. “Honey, I know you’re trying to be a thoughtful boyfriend right now, but you’re asleep on your feet. Come lie down,” he says, manhandling Jack slightly to get him onto the bed and mostly horizontal.

“Goodness, sweetpea. You should not have been driving,” Bitty says, working Jack’s sneakers off his feet.

“Mm,” Jack responds, voice muffled by the pillow that he’s faceplanted against.

“I should make you get up and brush your teeth, you know,” Bitty adds.

“Mmhmm,” Jack hums. He’s already half-asleep, so Bitty yanks the blanket up over them and tucks himself against Jack’s side. 

Once he’s out, he’s like a vise, arms clamped around Bitty. When they start out sleeping like this Bitty usually wiggles his way out in his sleep in the middle of the night, since he tends to toss and turn a bit more. Tonight, though, he feels like he’s suffocating. 

He lasts two hours, wondering how the drum tone of his heartbeat doesn’t wake Jack up. He swears it’s loud enough to hear from the street outside, accelerating every time he thinks too hard and gets more frustrated about how he just,  _ beat,  _ can’t,  _ beat,  _ fall,  _ beat,  _ asleep.

_ Beat. _

_ Beat. _

_ Beat. _

“Jack,” Bitty hisses, and then, when he doesn’t wake up, lightly drums at his chest. 

Jack’s eyes remain shut, but he mumbles something in French that sounds particularly distasteful. Bitty shakes him again and he finally opens his eyes, blinking sleepily, brow furrowed. He looks like he’s about to say something particularly grumpy, and Bitty doesn’t want to deal with it.

“What?” he snaps.

Bitty huffs. “Let go of me, you goon.”

Jack recoils, and Bitty feels like he’s just been punched in the gut. This happens a lot when he needs personal space. He knows that Jack doesn’t mean to make him feel bad for needing it, but the poor boy is awful at schooling his facial expressions. Bitty can read him like a picture book.

“Honey,” Bitty says, gentler this time. “I love cuddling with you, but you’re a furnace and I can’t sleep.”

Jack takes a deep breath. Bitty can practically see the wheels turning in brain, and can especially see the ghost of movement on his lips as he counts in his head to calm down. He stops when he gets to ten.

“Let’s talk about it,” Jack says, calmer now, even though he’s already stifling another yawn and blinking hard, struggling to stay awake enough for a conversation. “Is it nightmares again?”

Again, Bitty huffs. “Yes and no. They’ve been worse than usual, and now I think my dumb ol’ brain decided that no sleep at all is better than nightmare sleep.”

“First of all,” Jack says, “Don’t call yourself dumb, because you’re not. Second, what do you normally do when you can’t sleep?”

“Bake,” Bitty says, automatically.

“No, I mean, to help yourself sleep.”

“Bake,” Bitty repeats. “Until I’m exhausted enough to make it work. Or sometimes I skate, or jog, or work out. But my body is too tired for that right now. It’s just my mind that won’t stop moving.”

“Okay,” Jack says. “What about some of those teas that are supposed to help with sleeping?”

Bitty snorts, and Jack smiles. It may have been a joke-- sometimes it’s hard to tell with Jack. “No, Jack. Tea has not helped my chronic insomnia. Nothing helps. I just get so worked up trying to sleep that I can’t manage it.”

“Oh,” Jack says, then sits quietly, thinking. Bitty thinks he’s getting better at letting Jack be silent without rambling to fill the space, because he manages to distract himself playing with the duvet until he says, “I don’t think you should be trying to sleep at all, then.”

“What? Honey.”

“If you’re getting worked up, then you’re not getting any rest at all. You know that you still get rest if you close your eyes and lie down even if you’re not sleeping, right?”

“It’s not the same, really. I’ve tried that,” Bitty says. He’s feeling a little less claustrophobic, so he scoots back forward and clambers onto Jack’s lap, reaching a hand up to play with his hair.

“I know it’s not, but it’ll help if you’re not thinking about it.”

“Uh-huh. And how do I not think about it?”

“I’ll stay up with you,” Jack says. “And we can listen to podcasts. That way you can rest your eyes and think about something other than trying to sleep.”

“Jack Laurent. You’re exhausted. You’re not staying up all night with me,” Bitty says, although it’s a testament to how tired he is, too, that he doesn’t put up a bigger fight.

Jack slowly leans back against the pillows as he reaches over Bitty and grabs his phone and earbuds off the nightstand. “You know I’ll take plenty of naps tomorrow to make up for it. Want to pick a podcast, or should I?”

“You can,” Bitty says, and watches Jack pull up Spotify and start an episode of something that seems to be equally about cooking and travel. The narrator’s voice washes over him, and he slides back onto his back, keeping just his head against Jack’s chest and closing his eyes as Jack gently plays with his hair.

“Comfy?” Jack asks.

“Yeah.”

“Now you can roll off if I do fall asleep. But I won’t,” he says, and Bitty can hear him stifling a yawn.

“Sure, you won’t, you--” Bitty pauses when he’s overcome by a yawn of his own. He’s certainly not on the edge of sleep, but he can’t deny that this is more relaxing than just getting worked up on his own. “Goodness. Okay. Let’s try this.”

“Of course,” Jack says, and a moment later Bitty can feel him press his lips to his head. “We’ve got this.”

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading. Feel free to comment/kudos/share/otherwise engage with this, since I work on social media and I'm trained to thrive off numbers.
> 
> You can also follow me on Tumblr, where I'm also [hockeydyke](https://hockeydyke.tumblr.com/).


End file.
